“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I …”
This morning’s sunrise was so pretty. With the pink rays of the rising sun, shooting up into the heavens. I felt them seeking out, looking for answers. The V – the fork in the road – become more and more pronounced with each snapshot.
The sunrise so often reflects my inner life.
I recently posted a graphic of a fork in the road. One way leading to “same old shit”. The other path leading to “crazy new shit”. I had to laugh at the subliminal message there … Basically, at the end of it all, either road leads to shit, none-the-less. One just new. One just old. But that’s how life is. All of us, at some point, tire of our same-ol-same-ol. The grass is always greener on the other side …
Yesterday for me exemplified a day of navigating the perceived fork in the road. I’ve been slowly, but surely, trying to offload my parent’s vacation rental to a realtor. Which leaves some decision making in my parent’s hands. Of course their obvious question, is why? They aren’t ready for the change. I don’t have a neat little package of my future to hand them in answer. Yet, my soul knows it’s time move on (for me at least). And their rental is a limiting factor. Gratefully, my father began to see the picture, and agreed to at least begin exploring the options I had set forth.
Later in the day, I received a call with an opportunity to crew aboard another yacht as chief stewardess for two weeks, beginning next week. Looking at my calendar of villa responsibilities with Spencer off-island on vacation, taking this opportunity was simply out of the question. Another lost opportunity for my own soul’s growth and adventure. The call was just what I needed to keep me pushing forward …
I hold “Personal Freedom” as one of my highest values. Looking at life through this values list, my current set of circumstances is not particularly conducive to freedom.
I got to wondering how others overcome the indecision we all face at a tricky growth fork. I turned to my favorite personal development guru, Steve Pavlina.
Steve believes there are two different scenarios we encounter on our lifelong path of personal growth: Linear growth and growth forks.
Linear growth is when you can see the next steps ahead of you fairly clearly. A growth fork is when you see two or more mutually exclusive paths ahead of you, and it’s tricky to decide which path to take.
One reason it’s so easy to get stuck at a growth fork is that the pre-fork position offers the illusion of greater freedom than any of the post-fork decisions. This freedom often feels better than making a commitment to any one path. And many people in this situation will delay making a choice.
Why? Because the freedom of keeping both possibilities open feels better than the instant loss of our current reality. Neither path seems like a clear improvement over the state of perpetual indecision.
When we apply some sort of analytical process to decision-making, we are trying to assess and compare the consequences of different possible paths. The path with the best consequence is deemed the correct choice. Unfortunately, assessing and comparing consequences requires predicting the future, which we simply cannot do.
Steve suggests that instead of trying to predict the future to determine the long-term implications of each possible path, we need to drop the whole branching linear timeline model. Instead of regarding time as a line, consider time as a single fixed point. In other words, assume that only the present moment is real, and nothing beyond that exists.
Our decision point no longer involves the selection of a long-term path. Now it’s merely a state change to our present moment. As we consider the alternative choices we might make, ask this question: If I were to commit to this choice, how would it affect me right now? What immediate changes would I experience? Imagine each possible choice as real, as if you’ve already made it. Pay attention to how the choice makes you feel. Does it feel good, or does it feel wrong somehow?
Using this type of decision making, the growth fork will often transform into linear growth. The indecision fades away, and the fork itself becomes merely an illusion.
Growth forks often are simply a mental construct — a distraction — that our mind creates because at some level we didn’t feel ready to face the next logical step on our linear soul path. Because we think the step is too big for us to handle, we created the growth fork as a way of putting our progress on pause.
Making the right decision isn’t the real issue. Deep down we know the correct decision. The challenge: Being able to accept the correct path and to stop resisting it, dropping the excuses, and surrendering to our own growth …
Yes ..
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Reference: http://www.stevepavlina.com/…/2008/12/overcoming-indecision/
